


A Death in the Family

by bronweathanharthad



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 08:20:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12837081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bronweathanharthad/pseuds/bronweathanharthad
Summary: Thor, Frigga, and Odin struggling with the shock of Loki's sudden demise





	A Death in the Family

**Author's Note:**

> Loki does not die within this work, hence why I did not use the Major Character Death warning.

Once the shock passed, Frigga slowly made her way to where Laufey stood mere minutes ago. A ring of ash marked the area where that vile creature threatened to end her husband’s life. Under any other circumstance, a simple sadness would embrace her as she watched her son’s body count rise again, but she took grim joy out of personally witnessing Laufey’s fall.

    She picked up a towel and began to wipe away the ash, and her thoughts turned to her two sons. They had fought before, as brothers so often do. She grew worried sometimes, but she never truly feared for either one’s safety. But this fight, the one she had witnessed for only a few seconds and was bound to continue without her—this one was different.

    “Frigga.”

    Her husband’s voice brought her from her reverie, but her stomach turned before she even looked at him. Odin had never sounded like this. He sounded empty, almost hollow, and it frightened her.

    “What is it?” she asked, her voice quivering with fear as she stood. “Tell me.”

    Odin held Loki’s helmet in his hands.

    Nothing else was said.

    Frigga grabbed the helmet and sank to the floor. Her chest heaved from sobs that refused to escape, and no tears came to her eyes. Odin sat down next to her, gently removed the helmet from her grip, and took her in his arms.

    Her husband’s grip was like a switch. At his touch, tears suddenly flooded her eyes and gushed down her cheeks. Her neck tensed from the sobs she tried to restrain. The sob finally broke free, and she lost all self-control at that point. She trembled violently, and she sobbed and cried out more than she breathed. Her weeping rendered her light-headed, for she simply could not catch a good breath.

    Odin held her in silence for quite some time, but he finally broke the silence with a simple “My love, I am so sorry.” There was a beat, and he added, “Do you wish to be left alone?”

    “Yes,” Frigga whispered.

    She watched silently as Odin stumbled out of the room. She knew he had left to mourn, but she knew not where exactly he was going.

 

The casket was back in its proper place. It was perfectly centered, as if Loki had never taken it. Odin laid his hand on top of the casket, and he thought of the day that he first saw his lost son.

    He could not say whether love or pity inspired him to bring the abandoned infant back to Asgard. Thought of political gain came after the fact. The way Loki smiled as Odin held him was forever imprinted in Odin’s mind. Loki never smiled like that afterwards—not to him, at least. In youth, Loki saved most of his smiles for his brother, and Odin watched as his smiles grew fewer and fewer until they seemed to vanish altogether. Come to think of it, for someone who seemed to live for fun, Loki was unusually rigid.

    “I should have told you sooner,” Odin half-whispered to the casket. “I am sorry.”

    Had Loki known before Odin told him? Did his son have any idea? Surely he was too sharp-minded to be completely oblivious. Loki had asked whether he was cursed… What happened in Jotunheim that day? What happened that would cause his son to draw such a conclusion?

    He did not know Loki at all, Odin realized. Loki had been one of few words, and Odin mistakenly paired that with submission. He should have seen the desperate, power-hungry creature that lurked beneath the placid surface, and he felt older and more foolish than ever.

    Not for the first time, the Allfather found himself at a total loss for words. Only the simplest apologies came to mind. He could not find the words to tell Loki that he loved him. Nor could he articulate that it had always grieved him to inflict punishment on either son, or that no matter what justice commanded him to, it would always hurt him far too deeply to punish Loki. Nor could he remember how to tell Loki that no matter how disappointed or let down he was, Odin would always love him, and Odin would always take him back.

    Was grief supposed to feel this way? Feeling like a floating specter, waiting for the tears to come to your empty eyes—was this normal?

    Odin’s fingers caressed the casket, and suddenly he was a thousand years earlier in time and he was caressing the helpless babe abandoned in the temple.

    Tears flowed from his good eye and from his bad eye. He remained standing, grasping the casket to keep himself from falling as the grief finally penetrated.

 

Frigga sat on the foot of the bed, her feet touching the floor, and with Loki’s helmet resting in her lap, she began to reminisce.

    Loki had coveted such a helmet design since he was a toddler. Frigga to this day did not know what brought such a desire to her son’s mind, but she had one fashioned to her son’s liking just for the reward of seeing a smile on Loki’s face. Even as a baby he was solemn, and his laughter rarely implied the innocent joy that he was supposed to feel.

    He smiled and laughed with utter delight when she surprised him with the helmet. Each time the helmet was re-made, his smile lessened, and by adulthood, he only took the helmet with a curt nod.

    Frigga missed Loki’s smile, and she missed the days when he sought her for comfort. When envy towards his brother overwhelmed him or when a spell he learned had an unintended consequence, Loki always went to her. He held the childish belief that Mother would make everything better, and Frigga did everything to fulfill that demand. She became less successful as he grew older and less naïve, but the magic never faded altogether. He consulted her not two days earlier. How could so much have happened so quickly and with so little warning?

    Loki frequently complained that Odin treated him differently from the way he treated Thor. Those complaints were the hardest for Frigga to bear. Her heart ached to tell him the truth of his parentage, but Odin insisted stubbornly that Loki was not ready to hear, that it was better for him not to know. No matter how much she protested, her lord husband was adamant. Frigga resorted to telling Loki that Odin loved him and Thor equally, but simply in different ways. She wondered if Loki ever believed her.

    Her heart hurt more and more each time she heard of Loki’s acts. Try as she might, she never saw Loki as the mischief-maker that half of Asgard knew him to be. He was still the toddler who ran to Mother begging for a nice helmet and wondering why Father treated him differently.

    “I know that child dwelled within you till the end,” she whispered, stroking the helmet as if it were his hair. “I let you down, my son. I loved you as my own, but I let you down. I ought to have spoken for you, not sit idly as my husband kept you from the truth. I am sorry, my son.”

 

Thor’s whole body ached as he knelt stiffly at the bridge’s edge, laying his hammer aside. The emptiness made his body heavier somehow, and grief left him dazed.

    His thoughts strayed to his and Loki’s childhood. Did his thoughts have anywhere else to go? Of course they fought as children. Siblings always fought as children. But their fights carried into adulthood, and they were never supposed to be that … aggressive … were they?

    Thor loved his brother from the very beginning. Even before he knew where Loki came from, Thor vowed to love and protect him no matter what. Yet vows were useless if they failed.

    He tried to the best of his ability to love Loki as a blood brother. Had something gone amiss? Did he do something that made Loki suspicious, or was Loki by nature more envious than Thor cared to admit?

    Who caused such a descent? Thor blamed himself. He had no reasoning; he simply blamed himself.

    “I am sorry, Brother,” he sighed into the abyss. “I am so sorry.”

    And he closed his eyes, and he heard Loki saying his first word, and Loki’s laughter as Thor carried him on his shoulders, and him and Loki congratulating each other over their first victories in battle. And Thor wept for the creature his brother once was, and he wept for the space by his side where his brother should have been.


End file.
